We examine the long run operating and stock price performance of UK open offer firms in the context of the earnings management hypothesis. We find that in the pre-offer period offer firms report significant improvements in their operating performance unrelated to cash flow performance. Results on return performance show that offer firms outperform various benchmarks in the pre-offer year but underperform up to four years after the offer. Regression results show that pre-offer discretionary current accruals predict the long-run post-offer return underperformance but do not predict the short-run reaction to SEO announcements. Our findings are more consistent with the earnings management hypothesis than with either the timing hypothesis or the managerial response hypothesis and suggest that investors do not take full account of the information available at the time of open offers.Earnings management, open offers, SEOs, return performance, operating performance,

This study examines the impact of the recent financial crisis on the capital structure decision of UK, French and German firms. The results show that overall leverage ratios increase from pre-crisis (2006 and 2007) to crisis (2008 and 2009) years and then decrease in the post-crisis (2010 and 2011) years. Both equity and debt levels change during the crisis and post-crisis years. The findings further reveal that firms with lower than industry average capital structure ratios in the pre-crisis period experience a gradual increase in their leverage during crisis and post-crisis periods. However, firms with higher than industry average capital structure ratios in the pre-crisis periods experience a significant decrease in the leverage ratios particularly in the post-crisis period mainly due to changes in their equity levels.

PurposeThis paper aims to investigate the relation between corporate governance and earnings management around UK rights issues.Design/methodology/approachThe paper examines the effect of board structure, ownership structure, adviser structure, and capital structure on discretionary current accruals – a proxy for earnings management – for a sample of size‐controlled rights issuers. Rights issues are chosen as a context in which firms have particular incentives to manage earnings.FindingsThe results suggest that firms with higher debt to equity ratios, with lower proportions of non‐executive directors, or with no large block owner, are more likely to use discretionary current accruals to manipulate earnings around rights issues.Research limitations/implicationsSimilar research can be conducted around other equity issuing methods such as open offers and around other major corporate events such as initial public offerings.Practical implicationsThe paper's evidence contributes to an understanding of corporate governance and has practical implications for stakeholders. It suggests that investors can rely more on the financial disclosures of firms with lower debt to equity ratios, higher proportions of outside directors, and with a large blockholder. Regulators may propose that firms undertaking corporate events such as equity offerings should follow best corporate governance practices to enhance investor confidence.Originality/valueThis study is the first to investigate the corporate governance mechanisms in place to check opportunistic earnings management around specific corporate events for the UK market.

Natural antimicrobial peptides have been shown as one of the important tools to combat certain pathogens and play important role as a part of innate immune system in plants and, also adaptive immunity in animals. Defensin is one of the antimicrobial peptides with a diverse nature of mechanism against different pathogens like viruses, bacteria and fungi. They have a broad function in humans, vertebrates, invertebrates, insects, and plants. Plant defensins primarily interact with membrane lipids for their biological activity. Several antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) have been overexpressed in plants for enhanced disease protection. The plants defensin peptides have been efficiently employed as an effective strategy for control of diseases in plants. They can be successfully integrated in plants genome along with some other peptide genes in order to produce transgenic crops for enhanced disease resistance. This review summarizes plant defensins, their expression in plants and enhanced disease resistance potential against phytopathogens.

We report the very first example of a catalyst based on a ternary composite of graphitic carbonitride (g‐C3N4), ceria (CeO2) and magnetite (Fe3O4) for overall water splitting in 1.0 M KOH. Synergy between the components due to electronic effects results in a highly efficient catalyst which catalyzes Oxygen Evolution Reaction (OER) and Hydrogen Evolution Reaction (HER) at substantially low overpotentials (400 mV and 310 mV respectively) to produce benchmark current density (10 mA cm−2). OER activity of the catalysts surpasses that of the benchmark RuO2 catalyst at higher current densities (≥50 mA cm−2). The composite catalyst is stable and shows a Faraday efficiency of 98 % for OER. Overall water splitting was achieved at an overpotential of 1.94 V which is substantially high at 1 wt % loading of active metal.